History Forum / General / General Topics / November 2005

Historian Charged With Denying Holocaust

By William J. Kole, Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 17, 2005

Vienna, Austria - Right-wing British historian David
Irving, who once famously said that Adolf Hitler knew
nothing about the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews,
has been arrested in Austria on a warrant accusing him of
denying the Holocaust.

Irving, 67, was detained Nov. 11 in the southern province
of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws
making Holocaust denial a crime, police Maj. Rudolf
Gollia, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said
Thursday.

Austrian media said the charges stemmed from speeches
Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern
town of Leoben.

In a statement posted on his Web site, Irving's
supporters said he was arrested while on a one-day visit
to Vienna, where they said he had been invited "by
courageous students to address an ancient university
association."

Despite precautions taken by Irving, he was arrested by
police who allegedly learned of his visit "by wiretaps or
intercepting e-mails," the statement alleged. It said
that en route to Austria, Irving had privately visited
German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, a friend he had not seen
in 20 years.

Hochhuth has gained notoriety for plays criticizing the
Allies' bombing campaigns during World War II as war
crimes and characterizing Winston Churchill as a war
criminal. Earlier this year, Hochhuth was criticized for
defending Irving as "an honorable man" and insisting he
was not a Holocaust denier.

Austrian authorities had no immediate comment on the
supporters' statement.

The Britain-based Holocaust Educational Trust
congratulated Austrian authorities on the arrest. Trust
chairman Lord Greville Janner, noting that Britain has no
such laws that make denying the Holocaust a crime,
praised the Austrians "for doing what our law should but
does not permit."

"I hope this will lead to a successful prosecution,"
Janner said.

Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading
anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly
30 books, including "Hitler's War," which challenges the
extent of the Holocaust.

Besides his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about the
Holocaust, he also has been quoted as saying there was
"not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out
their "Final Solution" on such a scale.

The historian has said he does not deny that Jews were
killed by the Nazis, but he challenges the number and
manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

He has questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers to
exterminate the Jews and has claimed that the numbers of
those who perished are far lower than those generally
accepted. He also contends that most Jews who died at
Auschwitz did so from diseases like typhus, not gas
poisoning.

Irving remained in custody Thursday at a prison in Graz,
120 miles south of Vienna, the Austria Press Agency
reported, although that could not be confirmed.

If formally charged, tried and convicted, he could face
up to 20 years in prison, said Otto Schneider of the
public prosecutor's office.

But Schneider said it was unclear whether there were
sufficient legal grounds to continue holding Irving on
such a charge so many years after the alleged offense was
committed. A decision was expected by the end of next
week on how to proceed, Schneider said.

In March, more than 200 historians from around the world
petitioned C-SPAN to cancel a project that would have
included a speech by Irving as a counterpoint to a
lecture by Deborah Lipstadt, a renowned Holocaust expert
at Emory University.

Irving once sued Lipstadt for libel for calling him a
Holocaust denier, but his lawsuit was dismissed in 2000
by a British court, which ruled that Irving was anti-
Semitic and racist and misrepresented historical
information.

His film, "The Search for the Truth in History,"
triggered protests in Australia that led organizers of
the Melbourne Underground Film Festival to cancel a
screening.

Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the
years. In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the
equivalent of $6,000 for publicly insisting the Nazi gas
chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.

More at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051117/ap_on_re_eu/austria_irving_arrested

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    "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
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    "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
    "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.

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